"There is the businesswoman, wearing a suit and glasses and holding a briefcase. There is the mother, smiling as she pours milk into her children's cereal bowls at the breakfast table. There is the multitasker, holding a laptop in one hand and a baby in the other.

These stock images are familiar to anyone who has seen an advertisement or flipped through a magazine or brochure illustrating working women and families. And their ubiquity is hurting girls and women by feeding into old-fashioned stereotypes, says Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook executive who has become an advocate for women achieving leadership roles…

The new library of photos shows professional women as surgeons, painters, bakers, soldiers and hunters. There are girls riding skateboards, women lifting weights and fathers changing babies' diapers. Women in offices wear contemporary clothes and hairstyles and hold tablets or smartphones — a far cry from the typical stock photos of women in 1980s power suits with a briefcase."

Stock photography may not seem like the cutting edge of the culture wars, but the images are ubiquitous and pervasive. I thought it interesting that the three most-searched terms in Getty's database are "women," "business" and "family."

At any rate, perhaps in future we'll have fewer memes like 'Women Laughing Alone with Salad' to mock.